(May 24, 2011 at 5:46 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: Perhaps Void or Adrian could highlight how Austrian school has taken precautions to prevent racism and persecution in the market place and our economic society within its model. If you can, please use citations in your follow ups.Free market economics doesn't have any precautions to prevent racism or persecution in the free market, just as it doesn't have any precautions to prevent ageism or sexism. What prevents these in a free market is consumer action. People who oppose sexism don't buy from corporations that are reported to have sexist policies; the same goes for racism, ageism, etc.
If the majority of the free market consumers oppose sexism, then you'll find a large majority of corporations trying to cut down on it in their workplaces. Why? So that they can maximize their profit by having access to a larger group of consumers.
Ron Paul is correct in that the issue is "over and done with". The vast majority of Americans (and indeed, the vast majority of most civilized Western countries) have a positive stance on issues such as racism, ageism, sexism, etc. You don't believe me? Look at all the racist marches you have, and all the opposition that march against them, or the anti-gay protests, and the opposition that march against them. Now imagine what would happen if someone opened a local store that had a "no blacks allowed" or "no gays allowed" policy. I highly doubt the shop would need the government to act against them; they'd be out of business within a week.
Of course, in actual racist communities, I don't see a problem with shops having a "no blacks allowed" policy. Why would anyone? The racists in the community don't mind it, and why would any black person want to work for a racist in the first place?
The issue of affirmative action was brought up in another thread, but I want to mention it here, as I am 100% opposed to such legislation. It is, in my eyes, not the correct way to go about getting rid of racism. What affirmative action does is simply turn racism on its head, and end up discriminating against whichever race is more dominant in the current society. If two men go for a job interview, 1 white and 1 black, then the better man (i.e. the one who is more qualified and is better suited for the job) should get the job. I don't care if that man is white or black; it shouldn't matter. What matters is when one of the men (be it black or white) gets the job because said company has a quota for his respective race. Hiring based on race is exactly what affirmative action is supposed to prevent, but in fact all it does is make it commonplace.
I'm against affirmative action not because I'm some kind of racist, but because I was brought up to believe that people should be treated equally, and affirmative action simply doesn't do that. I was against affirmative action even when I was a liberal, because whichever way you look at it, is is treating people based on the colour of their skin, and not (to borrow a phrase from the great Martin Luther King Jr) on the "content of their character".
